Six Nations Language Commission highlighted funding issues its currently dealing with to Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC) during the Nov. 29 meeting in the language commission's annual report.

The Six Nations Language Commission was established in 2008 by SNEC to help the community revitalize its Indigenous languages within the Six Nations community. The commission provides two adult immersion language programs in both the Cayuga and Mohawk language. 

Language Commission Coordinator Karen Sandy detailed that the organization operates with a lack of funding to support its staff and certain programs.

"Our financial picture shows that she have some slippage, but that's because we've got to have enough funds when our year ends to carry us into the first quarter, because we often don't receive council's allocation until we have our year complete which is usually in July."

She said that currently a deficit can be seen in the organization's financial statements due to having to source there own funds to pay staff until the end of the fiscal year. She also detailed that an apprenticeship program that was run last year may not be available this year due to lack of funding.

"We ran that last year and it was actually very successful," she said.

"Ideally, we'd like to run it again but we just haven't secured the funding right now to do it again."

SNEC moved and passed Six Nations Language Commission's 2022 Annual Report as information and says council will meet with its finance team to determine the status on the annual allocation provided by SNEC and to look at the possibility of distributing that to the language commission in a more timely manner.

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